So it’s finally here, the product we have been anxiously awaiting for over a year since the vague details and whispers of what was known as “Pasadena” began to circulate.

If like me you do some very large Cisco UCS designs and implementations perhaps spanning multiple Data Centres, Countries or Continents UCS Central is a very welcome addition to the portfolio.

Up until now a single UCS Management domain could scale up to an impressive 160 servers (20 Chassis) whether blade, rack mount or usually a combination of both; now with UCS Central this management domain can scale out to an incredible 10,000 servers from First Customer Ship (FCS)

OK so what’s this really going to mean?

Well we’ve had passive multi UCS Domain visibility for a while now with UCS Dashboard, but now with UCS Central we can turn this “Monitor of Managers” into a full “Manager of Managers”

Just like UCS Manager UCS Central exposes an XML API for integration with customer and partner management solutions.

UCS Central does not replace UCS Manager, a UCS Domain will still be able to be fully managed just like we know and love. If a policy is a Global policy that option is simply greyed out in the local UCS Manager.

UCS Central is available as an OVF template to run as a virtual appliance and will require UCS Manager 2.1 (Due for release this quarter)

UCS Central will ship in two phases with additional functionality like the global Service Profiles planned for phase 2 early 2013

UCS Central will be free to use for up to 5 UCS Domains with every additional domain requiring a domain license.